Bonjour! My name is Jessica, I am a passionate French teacher native from the Champagne region in France. That’s me on the photo, in one of the many barley fields surrounding my French hometown!
There have always been teachers in my family, and that is no doubt why I’ve always loved learning and sharing my knowledge. My dad was the one who passed down his amazing passion for teaching to me.
How I became a French teacher
When I was little, apart from becoming a trapezist-contortionist and the caring manager of an orphanage, I also wanted to be a food label code cracker…I was fascinated by the list of ingredients printed in many languages and particularly by the languages that I couldn’t yet read because they were using a different alphabet or code. I vowed to myself that they would be no secret to me one day, and that’s exactly why I came to study Russian in high school. I also studied Italian, German, Mandarin Chinese and Latin (although I hated Latin and it never really helped with my food label cracking).
Following my passion for languages, I qualified in English and then in Teaching French as a Foreign Language, which gave me the amazing opportunity to travel the world to work with hundreds of students in France, Ireland, Trinidad and Tobago and China. I eventually settled in Melbourne, Australia after meeting my now husband.
My rebellious mind soon started to question the traditional ways of teaching with a textbook in large classrooms and that led me to start French Your Way so I could teach in total accordance to my teaching values and help students learn French with a more relevant approach. Read here to find more about how I teach.
And so, French Your Way was born!
French Your Way was created to help you find YOUR WAY to add French to your life, with different ways of learning French which you can combine freely to create the most relevant experience for you:
- I specialise in teaching French to adults of all levels and in French tutoring for high school students, in Melbourne and online. You can check the services I have to offer here.
- I also write articles, tutorials and worksheets that are free for your personal use and I host French Voices Podcast and French Your Way Podcast.
For suggestions on where to start on my website, start here.
I strongly believe that being both a teacher and a student of foreign languages has allowed me to get a great awareness of the difficulties that come up when learning a language, and I’ve become an expert in grammar 😉
In my opinion – and based on experience with both – I would say that an hour’s private lesson with Jessica is worth a term in a class setting. No joke. I have had things explained to me in 5 minutes that have confused me for years in formal classroom lessons.”
Peter Q Being a French teacher is such a rewarding job. It gives me the opportunity to interact with friendly students, analyse the intricacies of my own native French language, the cultural implicits, the process of language learning…Love it!
Just a bit more about me…
Apart from teaching French, I have a few hidden talents:
- I have a unique skill for reading five books simultaneously (you see, whether I’ll pick up this biography, that crime novel, this classic story or that magazine, in French or in English, will depend on my mood of the moment…). I love reading – to the point that storage is becoming a bit of an issue. Be sure you check out my Recommended Reading List for you to get started with French literature too. 🙂
- I have a Pentax DSLR camera and love photography. Follow me on Instagram !
- I have an experimenting mind in the kitchen, which my husband finds is more a reason to worry than a talent (especially since I cooked an inedible chocolate risotto with green beans). Despite being a perfectionist in so many fields, I can’t help swapping or adding secret signature ingredients to dishes in order to unleash my creative spirit. I did follow the recipe of macarons and croissants to the letter though, with mixed success:
For some mysterious reason, all the butter came out, which left me with inedible, shrunk fried “croissants”!
My first macarons. Very yummy but inconsistent in texture 😉
Melbourne Paris to Provence French Festival 2014
I really hope that you will love exploring this site and that I can help you make learning French an enriching and memorable journey.
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Thank you for your time. I value your opinion, so don’t hesitate to get in touch should you have any feedback or question. A bientôt!
